A Technical Manager's Perspective

Web 2.0 adoption in the Enterprise

Dan Farber from ZDNet hosted a panel at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and posted a Podcast and Video of the panel's discussion. They spoke of the Web 2.0 capabilities that are moving to the Enterprise, and which capabilities will be embraced by the Enterprise.

Most large organizations have a lot of process and control in place around data and applications. The Web 2.0 Expo panel points out that as Blog, Wiki, RSS and collective intelligence tools work their way into the Enterprise, these tools will start to change corporate culture and push adoption. I struggle with this change and that is why I am investigating Enterprise 2.0. I am trying to better understand Enterprise 2.0 and determine how it will be supported and deployed.

I would love to see these tools emerge in the Enterprise, however data and application compliance currently comes from process and control. I feel that we need to understand how to share control and stay compliant before these technologies will be adopted within the Enterprise.

Here is a preview and the link on to Dan Farber's blog post, podcast and Video ......

Podcast: From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- I posted a video clip of the panel on Web 2.0 in the enterprise (also known as Enterprise 2.0) I moderated the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week. Panelists included Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText; Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google Enterprise; and Satish Dharmaraj, CEO of Zimbra. We discussed [...]

Technorati : Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0

RSS for beginners

Many folks still visit web sites and blogs and out of habit they surf to the URL and read what is new. I found RSS about 2 years ago and realized it's power and flexibility. I first learned of RSS thru iTunes and podcasts, however I eventually tried a number of different readers before settling in on FeedDemon 2.1 as my RSS reader of choice. I love it and have it configured to open the blog/website in Internet Explorer when I double click on the link in FeedDemon. It's easy, it saves me time, and every night I can check on new content from 109 blogs and sites without surfing to each site. When I see a post or article that I wish to explore, I double click on the link and I am on the site.

Here is a nice little video that walks thru the basics of RSS and Subscribing to feeds. I know there are a lot of you that read my posts who are not using RSS. Please take a look at the video and consider using RSS. It's easy and it will simplify your surfing and reading habits.

Thanks to Lee and Sachi from Common Craft for the video .....

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Technorati : rss

Web Services 2003 and 2007

While talking with the application folks about the gaps in my understanding of SOA, one of the architects sent me a document called WebServicesProposal that he co-authored in 2003 after attending the Web Services Edge 2003 Conference. I was amazed how their observations from 2003 are so relevant today and thought it would be great to share this document with you. The authors are Joe Frate and Sean Nally and their document defined Web Services, identified what it can do for our company, documented where it would make sense within our company, and concluded that we should start working on Web Services with a quote of “Web Services is a breakthrough technology that should be taken advantage of.”

They went on to discuss ……

In a nutshell, Web Services is a services-oriented architecture that allows disparate and independent software systems to be integrated using standard message-based protocols for exchanging data.  These protocols leverage XML to standardize data representation.

With Web Services, software systems can provide services to each other no matter what platform they are implemented on or what technology they utilize.  For example, a software system implemented in J2EE on Unix could access services (and have its own services accessed) by another software system implemented in a COM environment on Windows.  Such integration is possible not only for modern software systems, but also for any legacy software system that is enhanced to communicate with a Web Service.  This is accomplished by “serializing” the data into a standard XML format, which is then exchanged between two Web Services; this is referred to as “messaging”.  When a software system is accessible through a Web Service, we can say that the software system is “wrapped by a Web Service”.

After reading their document, I can see where they have influenced applications development within our company over the last few years by wrapping web services around some of our older application or by replacing client server front ends with java based front ends while leaving the back end database resources unchanged.

Back in 2003, Web Services implied static html pages with a front end web form talking to a backend database or data repository. The Web and Web Services have evolved since 2003 into more than just static pages, embracing a more open social approach to communication that has been labeled Web 2.0. However, in my mind, the Web Services documented by Joe and Sean in 2003 is closer to an Architectural strategy encompassing Service Oriented Architecture than a social Web 2.0 strategy.

I know that there has been a lot of debate surrounding the differences and strategies between Web 2.0. SOA, and Enterprise 2.0 however, Businesses and large Enterprises take a guarded approach to sharing and manipulating data and that is why I see Web Services as more of an architectural strategy aligned with SOA as opposed to a social open strategy aligned with Web 2.0. I do think that the front end components of SOA could incorporate Web 2.0 characteristics and see Web 2.0 as a part of SOA and not a seperate entity.

In 2003, Joe and Sean identified Web Services as a revolutionary breakthrough technology. After talking with Joe this past week he mentioned that Web Services and SOA is an evolutionary technology.

I agree with Joe.

SOA/ESB Video

Check out this great little Whiteboard video from Ross Mason, CTO and co-founder of MuleSource, and the folks at ZDNet.......

What does it really mean to introduce SOA into an organization? Ross Mason, CTO and co-founder of MuleSource, explains how an enterprise service bus allows different applications to communicate with each other.    Here is the link to the video ...  First Steps of SOA

Initial phases of new SOA deployment

Most of the industry publications, sites and blogs are talking about SOA, trying to describe it and telling folks the best manner to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. I certainly noticed this trend and started digging into SOA and all the technologies surrounding SOA. We were recently acquired, and after the initial gap analysis of all of our applications and processes, Senior Management agreed to invest in rewriting our primary applications. The architecture team has started the process of taking a closer look at a Service Oriented Architecture, and has started the necessary investigative work to determine what works and what does not.

Given my role on the infrastructure deployment/support side of the business, I have little influence over new architecture decisions, but that does not stop me from talking with the architecture folks on a regular basis. I have always had a good understanding of the Front-end delivery side of applications (portals, clients, and web pages) along with the Back-end database servers and repository side, however the area that I need to focus on is the apps/workflow section that is between the portal resources and the database resources in a SOA type architecture.

Senior Management has beefed up the infrastructure team and has started the first phase of investigating products in the SOA space. I have been approached to deliver sandbox type resources (intel and unix servers) to assist the architects in their initial investigation of SOA type products, and I know that this is the opportunity that I have been looking for. I have shared my thoughts, my blog and limited knowledge of SOA, BPM and ESB with the architects who have been extremely open with information and in particular, have shared resources and pointed me to a couple of great resources that I am still investigating.

Over the next few months, I will share with you the resources that we use, keeping everyone up to date on the build-out of the sandbox environment, and communicate our experiences from a first person - ground floor approach.

Web 2.0 moving to Enterprise 2.0

In December I wrote about my understanding of Web 2.0. In January and February I touched on SOA, BPM, EIM and Enterprise 2.0. I have been skeptical about WEB 2.0 adoption in the Enterprise and look forward to Enterprise 2.0 strategies to be introduced in business. This past week ZDNet's Dion Hinchcliffe wrote about the new studies and reports that show a movement toward some Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 strategies, however points out that there many discussions occurring at the Senior C-level, and there is already a movement started at the ground level surrounding blogs and wiki's. To read more .......

More results on use of Web 2.0 in business emerge by ZDNet's Dion Hinchcliffe-- The last few weeks have seen a series of interesting new reports, studies, and papers on the past, present, and future of Web 2.0 concepts and applications as applied to businesses. Most notable for many industry watchers have been fairly rigorous new works by McKinsey & Company as well as Forrester, whom have each released the results of broad surveys of executives in various industries. The focus of both surveys was to capture a picture of the interests, activities, motivators for Web 2.0 adoption of several thousand C-level executives in medium to large companies...........

"Effective Web 2.0 in the enterprise, whether that's basic Enterprise 2.0 or a much broader and expansive view of Web 2.0 design patterns and business models which I've called Product Development 2.0 for lack of a better term, actually requires the active support of both the users on the ground as well as the top levels of an organization to really take off. Business are structured much differently that the consumer Web and major impediments to use of Web 2.0 production and consumption scenarios exist. This include lack of good enterprise search, mountains of closed legacy systems, the challenge of securing highly open, deeply integrated applications, and conflicting data models (XML, relational data, rich media, and more.) These are all challenges to the ultimate success of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, even to the point that some organizations are increasingly at risk of IT users doing so much themselves that the IT department can begin to lose control."  Read full article

I see this move to Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 as a change in Computer Information strategy and philosophy. We have worked thru the days of punch cards, green terminals, closed systems, open systems, client server, static web strategies, and now we are moving beyond that to a Web Services - Service Oriented Architecture that is secure enough for the Enterprise and flexible enough to allow input and refinement from many more sources within Enterprise.

Focus on Technical and Managerial Topics

I am coming up on my one year anniversary of blogging and I am looking to make a couple changes in focus and strategy with my blogging.

I really enjoy blogging and communicating and I know that I have a little following, however most of the folks that have communicated with me are more technical non-management folks and my interest and/or search for improvement is more on the managerial side, which leads to more posts about managerial content as opposed to technical content.

So, in an attempt to maintain both a technical and managerial focus I have created an new blog for system administrators called The System Admin which is located at www.syadmin.net. Notice the spelling and play on sy.

I have moved my Technical Manager's Perspective blog from my www.kmmm.net domain to www.techmgr.net. I am not sure what I am going to do with my www.kmmm.net domain however I will be focusing on both the www.techmgr.net and www.syadmin.net domains in the next few months.

Technorati : Blog, Management, System Administration